The following description is provided to assist the understanding of the reader. None of the information provided or references cited is admitted to be prior art to the present invention.
Longevity has long been one of the hottest areas of science, but it remains a poorly understood area of research. Critically and scientifically speaking, people do not know how to measure aging. Aging is not merely chronological. Some people are spry and nimble in their elder years, while others are afflicted by the diseases of aging—heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer disease, and dementia—by middle age.
It is a consensus that the population almost everywhere of the world is graying rapidly. The percentage of people age 65 and older is increasing from 7% in 2005 to 16% in 2050. The number of elderly people has already tripled since 1950, and will triple again by 2050, when 1.5 billion people will be over 65. Aging research involving the search for single-gene mutations with dominant positive effects on lifespan/health span has not been successful. Aging is a generalized degenerative deterioration, and is probably not due to changes in a single gene or system.
The phenomenon of limited cellular division was first observed by Leonard Hayflick, which is now referred to as Hayflick limit. During cell division, the replication of DNA cannot proceed all the way to the end of the chromosome. A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration. Without telomeres, cells would lose the ends of their chromosomes, and the necessary information they contain during their replication. The telomeres act as a disposable buffer blocking the ends of chromosomes that are consumed during cell division and replenished by an enzyme, the telomerase. Telomerase is capable of replenishing the 3′ end of chromosomes by adding TTAGGG repeats (Autexier C et al. 2006, Collins K et al. 2006).
Lengthening telomeres in certain important cells through temporary activation of telomerase, or by gene therapy for life extension has long been proposed. A study done with the nematode worm species Caenorhabditis elegans indicates that there is a correlation between lengthening telomeres and a longer lifespan. The worms with longer telomeres lived 24 days on average, about 20 percent longer than the normal worms (Artandi S E et al. 2000).